Thread: Ed Gillespie: Republican party relies on white votes too mu

THE IMMIGRATION DEBATE
A Hard GOP Line Could Erode Latino Vote
As attitudes harden, Bush risks losing control of his immigration reform efforts and his party faces alienating a key electoral bloc.
By Janet Hook, Times Staff Writer
March 28, 2006


WASHINGTON — This weekend's huge protest in Los Angeles against a proposed immigration crackdown was a metaphor for the sprawling problem facing President Bush: Though he has helped ignite the first significant debate over federal immigration policy in decades, he now is struggling to retain control of an issue that has provoked vitriol nationwide.

Many House Republicans are fighting Bush's signature initiative to set up a guest-worker program that would allow some undocumented workers to remain and work in the United States for a specified period of time — and they are even more enraged by the bill approved Monday by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which would treat illegal immigrants even more liberally. That clash of ideas has set a combative tone that threatens to drown out Bush's more temperate message.

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Now the political question is which approach will define the Republican Party in the minds of swing Latino voters — especially in battleground states with many immigrants, including New Mexico, Arizona and Florida.

The risk for Bush is that Congress' election-year immigration debate, which is coming to a head this week in the Senate, will undercut his efforts to attract more Latino voters to the Republican Party. Those efforts bore considerable fruit in the 2004 elections: According to Los Angeles Times exit polls, Bush picked up 45% of the Latino vote — a gain of 7 percentage points from 2000. The gains were so marked that, after the election, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus wrote to fellow Democrats warning of GOP inroads in their community.

But now, some Republicans worry that those gains will be eroded if the party as a whole is associated with strident opponents of illegal immigration, such as Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), just as California Republicans suffered in the mid-1990s because of Gov. Pete Wilson's proposed crackdown on immigration.

"Anti-immigration rhetoric is a political siren song, and Republicans must resist its lure by lashing ourselves to our party's twin masts of freedom and growth, or our majority will crash on its shoals," former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie said last week in a speech to the conservative Federalist Society.

"The Republican majority already rests too heavily on white voters," he said, arguing that Bush would not have won reelection in 2004 without the increased support of minority voters.

Implicitly acknowledging the political risk of a divisive debate, Bush last week warned Congress to conduct its debate in a "civil way."

"It must be done in a way that brings dignity to the process," he said. "It must be done in a way that doesn't pit one group of people against another."

As governor of Texas, Bush was a moderate voice on immigration issues, and he was supported by almost half the state's Latino voters in his 1998 reelection campaign.

As president, Bush helped thrust the issue onto Congress' agenda in early 2004, when he proposed letting workers from abroad, as well as some of the 11 million illegal immigrants already here, legally take jobs as temporary workers. That provoked the ire of some of the president's most ardent conservative supporters, who saw a guest-worker plan as equivalent to granting amnesty to lawbreakers. At the same time, Bush's plan was criticized by immigration advocates for not offering a path to citizenship.

For months, the issue languished in Congress with little pressure for action from the White House. But in late 2005, House and Senate GOP leaders came under growing political pressure from voters — especially among the elderly — enraged by the growth of illegal immigration. GOP leaders planned action on border security legislation, but summarily dropped the guest-worker program Bush said was crucial to dealing with illegal immigrants already in the country.

The House passed a tough bill, sponsored by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), that focused on enforcement. It would make it a felony to immigrate illegally or help someone who has, and called for construction of a 700-mile security fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles) argues that Bush lost influence over the immigration debate in the House because he did not do more to push his own proposal.

"If he had really pushed his shoulder into this, we would have had a more comprehensive discussion and a more civil debate," Becerra said.

On the other side of the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a likely candidate for president in 2008, also threw his weight behind a bill that did not include a guest-worker program and was ready to bring it to the floor if the Senate Judiciary Committee failed to agree on legislation.

The full Senate may begin debate this week on the committee bill, which contains provisions enabling those here illegally to seek U.S. citizenship without first having to leave the country. It also contains no criminal penalties for being here illegally or for helping those who are.

Adding to the political tension, the immigration debate is rife with post-Bush presidential politics: One alternative to Frist's bill, one that includes a guest-worker program, is co-sponsored by a potential rival for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

Glen Bolger, a GOP pollster, said that the divisions among Republicans over immigration policy reflected, in part, the difference in their long-term and short-term political interests. In the short term, many Republicans believe they stand to gain by addressing voters' fears and anger about illegal immigration. But in the long term, the GOP may be rejected by the growing population of Latino voters if its policies are seen as hostile.

The surprising backdrop for the Senate debate was set over the weekend, when an estimated 500,000 marchers jammed downtown Los Angeles to protest the House-passed enforcement-only bill. Other protests were held in Denver, Chicago and elsewhere. Protests continued Monday in Southern California, where almost 40,000 students staged noisy walkouts from their schools to protest proposed immigration legislation.

Such demonstrations, Tancredo said, may incite more opposition to illegal immigration.

"The immigration rallies over this weekend and today show how disordered our immigration system has become," he said Monday. "For years, the government has turned a blind eye to illegal aliens who break into this country. It isn't any wonder that illegal aliens now act as if they are entitled to the rights and privileges of citizenship."

But Becerra said the large number of demonstrators showed that "this is an issue that affects Americans, not just immigrants."

"It makes it very difficult for folks not to notice that there's a real concern about immigration policy and the direction Congress is taking," he said.

I too don't have access to the LA Times, but I got through on this article from another web site.....surprised me I could get it.

Well, the issue is not "white people" or white votes. The issue is does the GOP want to elect American candidates to represent the American People OR does it want to get a jump start electing candidates to represent other nations?

I guess Ed Gillespie made himself "a Traitor clear as crystal".